Why the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display is Apple’s best laptop

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Yesterday’s big announcements from Apple raise many questions. What is the difference between the different MacBook Pros? With these Retina displays, where does this leave the Air? Turns out, the new MacBook Pro is jumping to the front of the pack.

If you’re looking for a new laptop with some dazzle, you now have two excellent choices in the MacBook Pro line. The 15-inch MacBook Pro was updated earlier this year with a screen that puts last year’s model to shame. Now, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is available with the same high-quality screen in a smaller package. Now that we have these high-res displays, it’s hard to imagine ever going back.

The entry level 15-inch Pro is undoubtedly more powerful than the 13-inch. At $2199, it certainly better be. A bigger SSD, a quad-core processor, and a discrete graphics card make it a powerhouse. It’s a fantastic computer, but it just isn’t worth the extra weight and cost when compared to the 13-inch. The smaller model is a mere 3.57 pounds (1.6kg), while the 15-inch is almost an entire pound heavier. The entry level 13-inch is $1699, and that makes it $500 cheaper than its big brother. If you’re not specifically looking to dedicate your MacBook Pro to high-end gaming or video rendering, the 13-inch is clearly the better purchase. There are always tradeoffs between the two models, but this generation lands squarely on the 13-inch’s side.

So, what of the Air? Well, the cheapest 11-inch model is $999, and the 13-inch model starts at just $200 more. They’re certainly small and lightweight. The 11-inch is less than two and a half pounds (1kg), and the 13-inch is more than a half a pound lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Here’s the rub: they’re still underpowered, and their screens just don’t match up to the Retina-caliber displays in the Pro line. The 1440×900 resolution display n the 13-inch Air just doesn’t come anywhere close to the quality of the 2560×1600 resolution on 13-inch Pro. Until Apple gets around to updating the Air series, it is incredibly difficult to recommend them to anyone except the heaviest of travelers. To be fair, things will get a lot more interesting when we see Retina-caliber Airs.

As it stands with Apple’s current laptop line-up, the 13-inch MacBook Pro comes out smelling like roses. It doesn’t have the raw horsepower of the 15-inch Pro, and it doesn’t have the extreme thinness of either Air, but it does have the overall best value. With its respectable internals, mid-range weight, and brilliant screen, the 13-inch Pro is simply the best laptop Apple sells now. A week ago, that wasn’t the case. The previous version of the 13-inch was good, but the new version is fantastic. Unless you have very niche and specific needs, this is the laptop you want to have.

First it was a Samsung X10 — thin/light 14-incher, one of the first Centrinos. Had the GF 440 Go card. Then it was the Dell XPS 13, with… hrm, I forget which graphics card.

And now I have last year’s MBP13, which doesn’t have a discrete graphics card. The integrated graphics are just about good enough for some games at really low res. I think a HD 4000 would probably be enough — though obviously not at 2600×1600. I wonder how gracefully it up-scales games.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EKNZKJ5LBTYYEUH4NCSPTGFGGE Eric

That is a good question.
How would Skyrim play?.. or not..

I guess the question becomes does the display justify the lacklustre GPU configuration? And what can you play on the 13″ MBP w/R?

Then again, when asking what plays, I mean what runs acceptably (games or apps as well) for end users?

jescott418

If your a gamer would you spend $1700 on this Macbook Pro? Seriously?

Tim Tian

Here’s the thing, No (self respecting) gamer would spend anything on a macintosh.

jescott418

Lot of 15 retina Macbook Pro owners are not so happy about the scaling issues. Maybe some updates have helped but really its like having a high resolution of anything and having to drop it down. The lower you go the worse it gets.

jescott418

While I agree 2D graphics with the Intel graphics even with retina will be fine. Its the fact that gaming is out and any video editing could easily suffer with such resolution and Intel graphics. Yes, it will work but for $1700 I think Apple could do better.

Couple things that add to the cost. Upgrades from Apple for RAM and SSD. That makes it $2000 plus. Given that and a core i5 with Intel graphics and I cannot see a retina with this hardware justifying a 2 grand notebook.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1223563048 Angel Ham

There used to be a time where “Pro” meant Professional. Now it means Prosumer…

http://twitter.com/jerm1027 Jeremy Garcia

Prosumer? I thought it meant Prodigal.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1223563048 Angel Ham

In your dreams.

fdsilveira

Apple has seriously dropped the ball with this product. I was sooo looking forward to it. I have a 2011 13 MBP and was drooling over the idea of having retina and slimmer body as the 15 is just too big for me. I can deal with the integrated graphics, but $1700 for a notebook with only 128GB??? Are you kidding me? This would be my main machine. Where am I supposed to store my music, photos and videos that I like to carry with me + apps? 128GB storage at this point in time is like selling a notebook with 512 mb of RAM. AND its not upgradeable! So you necessarily need to upgrade to the 256GB, but then youre talking $2000!! Thats $800 more than the 13 Pro without Retina. Out of the question. Pissed off at you apple. And Im a fan

Joseph Sanchez

This is ridiculous. The 13 inch Pro sucks. That kind of display is marketed directly to Gamers and Videographers, which is why not having a dedicated video card is absurd. And whoever wrote this hasnt considered the form factor of the Air when talking about theoretical retina displays. The Air doesnt havent a large enough body to house a battery large enough to power a retina display. Not a lot of people make the connection but it should be obvious to tech reviewers. Battery technology needs to evolve before they can put this display into an Air. Apple would be pricing the Air out of the market if they figured out the power issue for the retina display.

Darcey Lloyd

I recently had to buy an Apple laptop to program for their devices (how convenient eh apple!)… After a lot of research, for £1,300 apple laptop the matching specifications would be a £800 pc laptop! WTF… Apple I hate you more now than I ever did. And to make it worse, I purchase tools for my work to program, they let me work on all devices (desktops / latptop), however anything apple specific ios, another £100 for a developer licence! And as expected the apple laptop I purchased is nowhere near the pc counterpart I have yet it cost a lot more. It sickens me.

eliking

It’s a pointless product. With MBA, you get superior experience on the go, It’s more portable, and you actually get more real estate at 1440×900 than the MBP gets when it does 2:1 scaling to 1280×800. Plus, by using the $500 savings to buy a nice external monitor, you get a superior user experience at home. At home or on the go, you are better off with an MBA.

Delegator

I see lots of discussion about the shiny screen and nothing about whether the integrated intel graphics can adequately drive the increased number of pixels on that screen. At 13 inches, you could swap out the regular hard drive of a regular MBP for an SSD and upgrade the RAM to 16GB (the Retina being maxed at 8GB), and still pay $500 less than the Retina version. And you’d still have a built-in superdrive (which you can also swap out for another SSD if you need more storage).

The 13″ Retina is simply overpriced and, because it lacks a dedicated GPU, underpowered. But it’s shiny enough to catch the eye of reviewers.

Tomac Woodsp

Spending an additional $400 for just an improved screen is ludicrious. Granted the 13″ rMBP has an SSD, but that is no longer unique.

If they had provided dedicated graphics (even 512MB), and the ability to add up to 16GB of ram, this laptop would have been worth a purchase. As it is the video is underpowered for the screen, and limiting the ram to 8GB is incredibly short sighted. I am disappointed with this release.

http://www.facebook.com/jose.p.avelar Jose P Avelar

The retina display really has no advantage when only a few games and apps will run properly. If your looking for a laptop for editing graphics or playing video games, then look for something else. These apple laptops are just for people who want to do basic things like edit word documents, look at pics u take and browse the web.

http://www.facebook.com/ncatelli Nick Catelli

I don’t mean to be harsh, but I think this 13″ Retina model, while beautiful in its own right, offers the LEAST value with regards to components. Look at it this way. The base model will net you a 128GB SSD and that, to be quite frank, is not enough. If the base model landed with a 256GB SSD like its older 15″ brother, we’d be talking something here. But as of now, getting a 13″ model with a 256GB SSD leaves you 200 dollars short of the 15″ model. Even worse, adding the equivalent i7 (and even still, it is a dual core) makes a computer that is exactly the same price as the base model 15″ Retina MacBook Pro… and what do you get for this same exact dollar amount?

You get a laptop that has HD4000 integrated graphics, where as the 15″ model lands you an over clocked GT650m which has been shown to benchmark as quickly as faster GTX cards, and a dual core i7 whereas the 15″ has a quad core chip. Everything else in the machine is exactly the same for the same amount of money… I can’t see how this is Apple’s “overall best value.” If anything, this goes to show how much of a value the 15″ Retina model is in comparison. Hell, the STANDARD 15″ MacBook Pro with a 256GB SSD upgrade and equivalent 8GB of RAM is 200 dollars MORE than the 15″ Retina model. The same can’t be said for the 13″ models. The equivalent non-retina 13″ Pro, equipped to equal the specs of the Retina model doesn’t cost 200 dollars more, it actually ends up costing 200 dollars LESS.

If anything, there is a problem with Apple’s pricing structures and the standard 15″ MacBook Pro is either TOO expensive, or the 15″ Retina is TOO cheap. Alternatively, the 13″ MacBook Pro is either TOO cheap, or the 13″ Retina is TOO expensive. Whichever it is, it doesn’t take away from the fact that the 15″ Retina is the better deal and gets you much more computer for your investment. If anything, the Retina 13″ right now is a fancier Air with a high resolution screen and, until it gets dedicated graphics or a quad core Intel chipset, that’s all it will ever be. The performance bottleneck for most will be the videocard and the RAM if it’s being used and, with such a high resolution display, the choice to not have dedicated graphics on the 13″ Retina model is not only disappointing, but damaging for the longevity of the machine and the ability of it to do serious work. I don’t see how, at least in this iteration, you can recommend a 13″ Retina over the 15″ and can’t even fathom how you’d try to sway a potential Air buyer to what is essentially an Air with a slightly faster processor. Sure, the screen is nice, but the 13″ is a swing and a miss right now, at least in my book.

msn

Why apple sucks is they use three year old hardware. You can get a hexacore 3.0 ghz i-7 in a laptop with 8gb ram and a gtx 660m and a 240gb ssd all for $1200 all of witch is around 8 to 10 x faster and if you do research you will see several warranty company have shown that asus is most reliable toshiba 2nd and lenovo 3rd where is apple down at 6th. And i have know problem with people buying products, as long as they realize Apple is for computer illiterate people so i hope you don’t boasrt that you have apple products

wd32lily

Having owned both the MBA and now rMBP 13″ I’m well positioned to comment on the benefits and challenges of both. Pricing/form factor are now similar with the MBA continuing to lead here. While discussion circles on value comparing major components it fails to consider operational experience and support components. The MBA has one fan compared to the two in the rMBP. Not wanting to incite a huge rebuttal on cost variance and relevance of a simple extra fan it’s understood the cost is nominal and a redundant issue. Operationally however is a complete other matter with a huge plus favouring the rMBP experience. My MBA crashed (required TM recovery) 4 times in the year I owned it and frequently froze under intense use (NO GAMING). Tried older games and frame rate/lag was horrible. In the couple months since picking up the rMBP (i7 3.0, 512gb SSM) haven’t experienced a single freeze up and no crashes yet. Including a few hours of gaming with older COD.

The fact is rMBP has better cooling (2 fans) and that small cost variable provides the added reliability not evident in the MBA. As I haven’t researched for other form factor variances (which I expect exist) I’m not able to comment however, the additional cooling alone presents a huge advantage in functionality and confidence to the rMBP.

Agreed the high level analysis does certainly present an illogical price variance when focused on major components but that’s not where the comps end. Having built countless PC with massive CPU/GPU overclocking I can assure you cooling is a major consideration when comparing the MBA and rMBP. My experience alone sets out the major functionality issue and the bottom line is “you get what you pay for”, fortunately Apple provides an opportunity to stepup if your looking for ABSOLUTE peace of mind and confidence with your purchase. A price I was willing to pay for with the rMBP. In the end portability coupled with solid reliable performance are the features important in my buying decision. The MBA didn’t have the reliability and the 15″ rMBP was simply too big…..sounds a bit like “the three bears”. The sad reality is Apple has done little to differentiate the subtle variances but believe “THEY EXIST”.

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